Letter #217: Snow White and the Moral Dwarves

They Are Seven

Splek.

While you were celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation marking the Virgin Mary’s acceptance of the joy and grief of holy motherhood, I had more important things on my mind. Like the opening of the live action remake of the Disney cartoon Snow White. As you’ve probably heard, the movie was a titanic hit, if by Titanic you mean the ship, and if by hit you’re referring to the long scraping collision with an iceberg that opened six of the ocean liner’s sixteen watertight containers and sent it to the bottom of the sea.

The movie’s utter failure came about after the buzzsaws of social justice piety gutted it of every vestige of the joy, beauty, meaning and art in the original 1937 film. The movie’s star, Rachel Zegler, a loudmouthed dope, repeatedly complained about the story’s romantic center and wanted it instead to focus on Snow White’s rise to political power. The famous theme song “Someday My Prince Will Come,” was cut, presumably for the far more catchy, “Someday I Will Have Political Power.” Then actor Peter Dinklage, who rose to stardom as a dwarf, complained that they shouldn’t be making movies with dwarves in them. And Gal Gadot, an Israeli, supported Israel, alienating the antisemites, who complained about something, but who cares what?

Now I confess all this made me laugh a lot harder than the Feast of the Annunciation. But when you think about it, it’s actually kind of profound. Fairy tales most likely contain the collective storytelling wisdom of mothers. The Brothers Grimm, who collected them in the early 1800’s, often used women as sources. These women, it seems to me, were likely passing on the creations of forgotten mom legions, who invented the tales to teach their children what they knew of life. Which was a lot, because they had not only created life, but nurtured it into full humanity.

They knew, in other words, what Mary knew: that the burden, privilege, joy and grief of motherhood constitute life at its fullest and most high. Which means we live in a society that refuses to hear the voices of those who have spoken, in their own small way, the mighty “Yes” of the annunciation.

We have been discussing sin as a bending inward, self into self, and have seen why such twistedness — a life of porn and spinsterhood and pleasure severed from its purpose — is a certain path to death, empty wombs leading to an empty future. If the Ouroboros — the snake who devours his own tail — is a symbol of eternity and rebirth, sin is that other snake who devours himself entirely and leaves nothing behind.

As you say, technology gives us more freedom which to choose, a shot at Life Eternal today or the certainty of utter nothingness tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Maybe, as a society, we ought to think more about how to make that choice. And talk more about the God who yearns to be our guide.

Love, Dad